sounds absurdly pretentious, yet the boastfulness
is closer to the child's who stretches out its hand

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THE MAKING OF CREEDS

for the moon than the romantic egotist's who
thinks he has created the moon and all the stars.
Whole systems of philosophy have claimed such
an eternal and absolute validity; the nineteenth
century produced a bumper crop of so-called
atheists, materialists and determinists who be-
lieved in all sincerity that "Science'^ was capable
of a complete truth and unfailing prediction. If
you want to see this faith in all its naivete go
into those quaint rationalist circles where Herbert
Spencer's ghost announces the *'laws of life,"
with only a few inessential details omitted.

Now, of course, no philosophy of this sort has
ever realized such hopes. Mankind has cer-
tainly come nearer to justifying Mr. Chesterton's
observation that one of its favorite games is
called ''Cheat the Prophet." . . . 'The
players listen very carefully and respectfully to
all that the clever men have to say about what is
to happen in the next generation. The players
then wait until all the clever men are dead, and
bury them nicely. They then go and do some-
thing else." Now this weakness is not, as Mr.
Chesterton would like to believe, confined to the
clever men. But it is a weakness, and many
people have speculated about it. Why in the
face of hundreds of philosophies wrecked on the

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rocks of the unexpected do men continue to be-
lieve that the intellect can transcend the vicissi-
tudes of experience?

For they certainly do believe it, and generally
the more parochial their outlook, the more cosmic
their pretensions. All of us at times yearn for
the comfort of an absolute philosophy. We try
to beheve that, however finite we may be, our in-
tellect is something apart from the cycle of our
life, capable by an Olympian detachment from
human interests of a divine thoroughness. Even
our evolutionist philosophy, as Bergson shows,
"begins by showing us in the intellect a local
effect of evolution, a flame, perhaps accidental,
which lights up the coming and going of living
things in the narrow passage open to their action;
and lo I forgetting what it has just told us, makes
of this lantern glimmering in a tunnel a Sun
which can illuminate the world."

This is what most of us do in our search for
a philosophy of politics. We forget that the big
systems of theory are much more like village
lamp-posts than they are like the sun, that they
were made to light up a particular path, obviate
certain dangers, and aid a peculiar mode of life.
The understanding of the place of theory in hfe
is a comparatively new one. We are just be-

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THE MAKING OF CREEDS

ginning to see how creeds are made. And the
insight is enormously fertile. Thus Mr. Alfred
Zimmern in his fine study of *'The Greek Com-
monwealth" says of Plato and Aristotle that no
interpretation can be satisfactory which does not
take into account the impression left upon their
minds by the social development which made
the age of these philosophers a period of Athen-
ian decline. Mr. Zimmern's approach is common
enough in modern scholarship, but the full sig-
nificance of it for the creeds we ourselves are
making is still something of a novelty. When
we are asked to think of the "Republic" as the
reaction of decadent Greece upon the conserva-
tive temperament of Plato, the function of theory
is given a new illumination. Political philosophy
at once appears as a human invention in a par-
ticular crisis — an instrument to fit a need. The
pretension to finality falls away.

This is a great emancipation. Instead of
clinging to the naive belief that Plato was legis-
lating for all mankind, you can discuss his plans
as a temporary superstructure made for an his-
torical purpose. You are free then to appreciate
the more enduring portions of his work, to un-
derstand Santayana when he says of the Plato-
nists, "their theories are so extravagant, yet their

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A PREFACE TO POLITICS

Wisdom seems so great. Platonism is a very re-
fined and beautiful expression of our natural in-
stincts, it embodies conscience and utters our in-
most hopes." This Insight Into the values of
human life, partial though It be, Is what consti-
tutes the abiding monument of Plato's genius.
His constructions, his formal creeds, his law-
making and social arrangements are local and
temporary — for us they can have only an anti-
quarian interest.

In some such way as this the sophomoric riddle
is answered: no thinker can lay down a course of
action for all mankind — programs if they are use-
ful at all are useful for some particular historical
period. But If the thinker sees at all deeply into
the life of his own time, his theoretical system will
rest upon observation of human nature. That
remains as a residue of wisdom long after his
reasoning and his concrete program have passed
into limbo. For human nature in all its pro-
founder aspects changes very little in the few gen-
erations since our Western wisdom has come to
be recorded. These aperciis left over from the
great speculations are the golden threads which
successive thinkers weave Into the pattern of their
thought. Wisdom remains; theory passes.

If that is true of Plato with his ample vision
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THE MAKING OF CREEDS

how much truer Is it of the theories of the littler
men — politicians, courtiers and propagandists
who make up the academy of politics. Machla-
velli will, of course, be remembered at once as
a man, whose speculations were fitted to an his-
torical crisis. His advice to the Prince was real
advice, not a sermon. A boss was telling a
governor how to extend his power. The wealth
of MachlavelH's learning and the splendid pene-
tration of his mind are used to Interpret ex-
perience for a particular purpose. I have always
thought that Machlavelll derives his bad name
from a too transparent honesty. Less direct
minds would have found high-sounding ethical
sanctions In which to conceal the real Intent.
That was the nauseating method of nineteenth
century economists when they tried to Identify
the brutal practices of capitalism with the benefi-
cence of nature and the Will of God. Not so
Machlavelll. He could write without a blush
that "a prince, especially a new one, cannot ob-
serve all those things for which men are esteemed,
being often forced, In order to maintain the state,
to act contrary to fidelity, friendship, humanity,
and religion." The apologists of business also
justified a rupture with human decencies. They
too fitted their theory to particular purposes, but



A PREFACE TO POLITICS

they had not the courage to avow it even to them-
selves.

The rare value of Machiavelli is just this lack
of self-deception. You may think his morals
devilish, but you cannot accuse him of quoting
scripture. I certainly do not admire the end he
serves: the extension of an autocrat's power is
a frivolous perversion of government. His ideal
happens, however, to be the aim of most foreign
offices, politicians and "princes of finance."
Machiavelli's morals are not one bit worse than
the practices of the men who rule the world
to-day. An American Senate tore up the Hay-
Pauncefote treaty, and with the approval of the
President acted "contrary to fidelity" and friend-
ship too; Austria violated the Treaty of Berlin
by annexing Bosnia and Herzegovina. Machia-
velli's ethics are commonplace enough. His head
is clearer than the average. He let the cat out
of the bag and showed in the boldest terms how
theory becomes an instrument of practice. You
may take him as a symbol of the political
theorist. You may say that all the thinkers of
influence have been writing advice to the Prince.
Machiavelli recognized Lorenzo the Magnificent;
Marx, the proletariat of Europe.

At first this sounds like standing the world on
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THE MAKING OF CREEDS

its head, denying reason and morality, and exalt-
ing practice over righteousness. That is neither
here nor there. I am simply trying to point out
an illuminating fact whose essential truth can
hardly be disputed. The important social phi-
losophies are consciously or otherwise the ser-
vants of men's purposes. Good or bad, that it
seems to me is the way we work. We find reasons
for what we want to do. The big men from
Machlavelh through Rousseau to Karl Marx
brought history, logic, science and philosophy to
prop up and strengthen their deepest desires.
The followers, the epigones, may accept the rea-
sons of Rousseau and Marx and deduce rules
of action from them. But the original genius
sees the dynamic purpose first, finds reasons after-
ward. This amounts to saying that man when
he Is most creative is not a rational, but a wilful
animal.

The political thinker who to-day exercises the
greatest influence on the Western World is, I
suppose, Karl Marx. The socialist movement
calls him its prophet, and, while many socialists
say he is superseded, no one disputes his his-
torical importance. Now Marx embalmed his
thinking In the language of the Hegelian school.
He founded it on a general philosophy of society

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A PREFACE TO POLITICS

which IS known as the materialistic conception of
history. Moreover, Marx put forth the claim
that he had made socialism "scientific" — had
shown that it was woven into the texture of
natural phenomena. The Marxian paraphernalia
crowds three heavy volumes, so elaborate and
difficult that socialists rarely read them. I have
known one socialist who lived leisurely on his
country estate and claimed to have "looked" at
every page of Marx. Most socialists, including
the leaders, study selected passages and let it go
at that. This is a wise economy based on a good
Instinct. For all the parade of learning and
dialectic Is an after-thought — an accident from
the fact that the prophetic genius of Marx ap-
peared in Germany under the incubus of Hegel.
Marx saw what he wanted to do long before he
wrote three volumes to justify it. Did not the
Communist Manifesto appear many years before
"Das Kapital"?

Nothing is more instructive than a socialist
"experience" meeting at which everyone tries to
tell how he came to be converted. These gather-
ings are notoriously untruthful — in fact, there is
a genial pleasure in not telling the truth about
one's salad days in the socialist movement. The
prevalent lie is to explain how the new convert,

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THE MAKING OF CREEDS

Standing upon a mountain of facts, began to trace
out the highways that led from hell to heaven.
Everybody knows that no such process was ac-
tually lived through, and almost without excep-
tion the real story can be discerned: a man was
dissatisfied, he wanted a new condition of life,
he embraced a theory that would justify his hopes
and his discontent. For once you touch the
biographies of human beings, the notion that
political beliefs are logically determined collapses
like a pricked balloon. In the language of
philosophers, socialism as a living force is a
product of the will — a will to beauty, order,
nelghborllness, not Infrequently a will to health.
Men desire first, then they reason; fascinated by
the future, they invent a ''scientific socialism" to
get there.

Many people don't like to admit this. Or if
they admit it, they do so with a sigh. Their
minds construct a Utopia — one In which all judg-
ments are based on logical Inference from syllo-
gisms built on the law of mathematical probabili-
ties. If you quote David Hume at them, and
say that reason itself is an Irrational Impulse they
think you are Indulging in a silly paradox. I
shall not pursue this point very far, but I believe
it could be shown without too much difficulty that

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the rationalists are fascinated by a certain kind
of thinking — logical and orderly thinking — and
that it is their will to impose that method upon
other men.

For fear that somebody may regard this as
a play on words drawn from some ultra-modern
"anti-intellectualist" source, let me quote San-
tayana. This is what the author of that masterly
series "The Life of Reason" wrote in one of his
earlier books: "The ideal of rationality is itself
as arbitrary, as much dependent on the needs of
a finite organization, as any other ideal. Only
as ultimately securing tranquillity of mind, which
the philosopher instinctively pursues, has it for
him any necessity. In spite of the verbal pro-
priety of saying that reason demands rationality,
what really demands rationality, what makes it
a good and indispensable thing and gives it all
its authority, is not its own nature, but our need
of it both in safe and economical action and in
the pleasures of comprehension." Because
rationality itself is a wilful exercise one hears
Hymns to Reason and sees it personified as an
extremely dignified goddess. For all the light
and shadow of sentiment and passion play even
about the syllogism.

The attempts of theorists to explain man's suc-
^16



THE MAKING OF CREEDS

cesses as rational acts and his failures as lapses
of reason have always ended in a dismal and
misty unreality. No genuine politician ever treats
his constituents as reasoning animals. This is as
true of the high politics of Isaiah as It Is of the
ward boss. Only the pathetic amateur deludes
himself into thinking that, if he presents the major
and minor premise, the voter will automatically
draw the conclusion on election day. The suc-
cessful politician — good or bad — deals with the
dynamics — with the will, the hopes, the needs and
the visions of men.

It isn't sentimentality which says that where
there Is no vision the people perisheth. Every
time Tammany Hall sets off fireworks and oratory
on the Fourth of July; every time the picture of
Lincoln is displayed at a political convention;
every red bandanna of the Progressives and red
flag of the socialists; every song from "The
Battle Hymn of the Republic" to the "Inter-
national"; every metrical conclusion to a great
speech — whether we stand at Armageddon, re-
fuse to press upon the brow of labor another
crown of thorns, or call upon the workers of the
world to unite — every one of these slogans Is an
incitement of the will — an effort to energize
politics. They are attempts to harness blind im-

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A PREFACE TO POLITICS

pulses to particular purposes. They are tributes
to the sound practical sense of a vision in politics.
No cause can succeed without them: so long as
you rely on the efficacy of "scientific" demonstra-
tion and logical proof you can hold your conven-
tions in anybody's back parlor and have room to
spare.

I remember an observation that Lincoln
Steffens made in a speech about Mayor Tom
Johnson. *'Tom failed," said Mr. Steffens, "be-
cause he was too practical." Coming from a
man who had seen as much of actual politics as
Mr. Steffens, it puzzled me a great deal. I taxed
him with it later and he explained somewhat as
follows: "Tom Johnson had a vision of Cleve-
land which he called The City on the Hill. He
pictured the town emancipated from its ugliness
and its cruelty — a beautiful city for free men and
women. He used to talk of that vision to the
^cabinet' of political lieutenants which met every
Sunday night at his house. He had all his ap-
pointees working for the City on the Hill. But
when he went out campaigning before the people
he talked only of three-cent fares and the tax
outrages. Tom Johnson didn't show the people
the City on the Hill. He didn't take them into
his confidence. They never really saw what it

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THE MAKING OF CREEDS

was all about. And they went back on Tom
Johnson."

That is one of Mr. Steffens*s most acute ob-
servations. What makes it doubly interesting is
that Tom Johnson confirmed It a few months be-
fore he died. His friends were telling him that
his defeat was temporary, that the work he had
begun was unchecked. It was plain that in the
midst of his suffering, with death close by, he
found great comfort in that assurance. But his
mind was so realistic, his integrity so great that
he could not blink the fact that there had been
a defeat. Steffens was pointing out the explana-
tion: *'you did not show the people what you
saw, you gave them the details, you fought their
battles, you started to build, but you left them
in darkness as to the final goal."

I wish I could recall the exact words in which
Tom Johnson replied. For in them the greatest
of the piecemeal reformers admitted the practical
weakness of opportunist politics.

There is a type of radical who has an idea
that he can Insinuate advanced ideas into legis-
lation without being caught. His plan of action
Is to keep his real program well concealed and
to dole out sections of it to the public from time
to time. John A. Hobson in "The Crisis of

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A PREFACE TO POLITICS

Liberalism*' describes the '^practical reformer"
so that anybody can recognize him: "This re-
volt against ideas is carried so far that able men
have come seriously to look upon progress as a
matter for the manipulation of wire-pullers, some-
thing to be 'jobbed' in committee by sophistical
notions or other clever trickery." Lincoln Stef-
fens calls these people **our damned rascals." Mr.
Hobson continues, *'The attraction of some ob-
vious gain, the suppression of some scandalous
abuse of monopolist power by a private company,
some needed enlargement of existing Municipal
or State enterprise by lateral expansion — such
are the sole springs of action." Well may Mr.
Hobson inquire, ^'Now, what provision is made
for generating the motor power of progress in
Collectivism?**

No amount of architect's plans, bricks and
mortar will build a house. Someone must have
the wish to build it. So with the modern demo-
cratic state. Statesmanship cannot rest upon the
good sense of its program. It must find popular
feeling, organize it, and make that the motive
power of government. If you study the success
of Roosevelt the point is re-enforced. He is a
man of will in whom millions of people have felt
the embodiment of their own will. For a time

mo



THE MAKING OF CREEDS

Roosevelt was a man of destiny In the truest
sense. He wanted what a nation wanted: his
own power radiated power; he embodied a vision;
Tom, Dick and Harry moved with his movement.

No use to deplore the fact. You cannot stop
a living body with nothing at all. I think we may
picture society as a compound of forces that are
always changing. Put a vision in front of one
of these currents and you can magnetize It In
that direction. For visions alone organize pop-
ular passions. Try to ignore them or box them
up, and they will burst forth destructively. When
Haywood dramatizes the class struggle he uses
class resentment for a social purpose. You may
not like his purpose, but unless you can gather
proletarian power into some better vision, you
have no grounds for resenting Haywood. I
fancy that the demonstration of King Canute set-
tled once and for all the stupid attempt to ignore^
a moving force.

A dynamic conception of society always fright-
ens a great number of people. It gives politics
a restless and intractable quality. Pure reason
is so gentlemanly, but will and the visions of a
people — these are adventurous and incalculable
forces. Most politicians living for the day prefer
to ignore them. If only society will stand fairly

^21



A PREFACE TO POLITICS

Still while their career is in the making they
are content to avoid the actualities. But a poli-
tician with some imaginative interest in genuine
affairs need not be seduced into the learned folly
of pretending that reality is something else than
it is. If he is to influence life he must deal with
it. A deep respect is due the Schopenhauerian
philosopher who looks upon the world, finds that
its essence is evil, and turns towards insensitive
calm. But no respect is due to anyone who sets
out to reform the world by ignoring its quality.
Whoever is bent upon shaping politics to better
human uses must accept freely as his starting point
the impulses that agitate human beings. If ob-
servation shows that reason is an instrument of
will, then only confusion can result from pretend-
ing that it isn't.

I have called this misplaced ''rationality" a
piece of learned folly, because it shows itself most
dangerously among those thinkers about politics
who are divorced from action. In the Univer-
sities political movements are generally regarded
as essentially static, cut and dried solids to be
judged by their logical consistency. It is as if
the stream of life had to be frozen before it
could be studied. The socialist movement was
given a certain amount of attention when I was

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THE MAKING OF CREEDS

an undergraduate. The discussion turned prin-
cipally on two points: were rent, interest and
dividends earned? Was collective ownership of
capital a feasible scheme? And when the pro-
fessor, who was a good dialectician, had proved
that interest was a payment for service ("saving")
and that public ownership was not practicable,
it was assumed that socialism was disposed of.
The passions, the needs, the hopes that generate
this worldwide phenomenon were, I believe,
pocketed and ignored under the pat saying: "Of
course, socialism is not an economic policy, it's
a religion." That was the end of the matter for
the students of politics. It was then a matter
for the divinity schools. If the same scholastic
method is in force there, all that would be needed
to crush socialism is to show its dogmatic in-
consistencies.

The theorist is incompetent when he deals with
socialism just because he assumes that men are
determined by logic and that a false conclusion
will stop a moving, creative force. Occasionally
he recognizes the wilful character of politics:
then he shakes his head, climbs into an ivory
tower and deplores the moonshine, the religious
manias and the passions of the mob. Real life
is beyond his control and influence because real



A PREFACE TO POLITICS

life Is largely agitated by Impulses and habits, un-
conscious needs, faith, hope and desire. With all
his learning he Is Ineffective because, Instead of
trying to use the energies of men, he deplores
them.

Suppose we recognize that creeds are Instru-
ments of the will, how would it alter the char-
acter of our thinking? Take an ancient quarrel
like that over determinism. Whatever your
philosophy, when you come to the test of actual
facts you find, I think, all grades of freedom
and determinism. For certain purposes you be-
lieve In free will, for others you do not. Thus,
as Mr. Chesterton suggests, no determlnlst Is
prevented from saying "If you please" to the
housemaid. In love, in your career, you have no
doubt that "if" Is a reality. But when you are
engaged in scientific investigation, you try to re-
duce the spontaneous in life to a minimum. Mr.
Arnold Bennett puts forth a rather curious hybrid
when he advises us to treat ourselves as free
agents and everyone else as an automaton. On
the other hand Prof. Miinsterberg has always in-
sisted that in social relations we must always
treat everyone as a purposeful, integrated char-
acter.

Your doctrine, in short, depends on your pur-
S24



THE MAKING OF CREEDS

pose: a theory by Itself is neither moral nor Im-
moral, its value is conditioned by the purpose it
serves. In any accurate sense theory is to be
judged only as an effective or ineffective instru-
ment of a desire: the discussion of doctrines is
technical and not moral. A theory has no in-
trinsic value: that is why the devil can talk
theology.

No creed possesses any final sanction. Human
beings have desires that are far more important
than the tools and toys and churches they make
to satisfy them. It Is more penetrating, in my
opinion, to ask of a creed whether it served than
whether it was "true." Try to judge the great
beliefs that have swayed mankind by their inner
logic or their empirical solidity and you stand
forever, a dull pedant, apart from the Interests
of men. The Christian tradition did not sur-
vive because of Aquinas or fall before the Higher
Criticism, nor will It be revived because someone
proves the scientific plausibility of its doctrine.
What we need to know about the Christian epic
is the effect It had on men — true or false, they
have believed in it for nineteen centuries. Where
has it helped them, where hindered? What needs
did it answer? What energies did It transmute?
And what part of mankind did It neglect ? Where